Helena
Karam Hirji is an experienced finance and operations professional currently serving as the Director of Finance and Operations at Helena since August 2022, where the focus is on venture capital and private equity investments aimed at addressing societal challenges. Karam also holds a Non Executive Director position at Extrupet Pty LTD, Africa's largest plastics recycler, since June 2018. Previous roles include Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Finance Director at Polymateria from September 2018 to August 2022, and Managing Director at Kaan Investments (Pty) Limited from January 2016 to December 2019. Karam's career began with a Transformation Management Consultant role at BT and as a Business Assurance Senior at BDO UK LLP. Karam holds a Bachelor’s Degree with Honors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bristol and is a member of the ICAEW.
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Helena
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Helena is a global problem solving organization. Its purpose is to identify potential solutions to critical global problems and directly implement them through individual projects. Helena’s “America in One Room” (A1R) project was one of the most significant political experiments in American History. A1R brought the most representative sample of the United States electorate ever assembled to a single location for a four-day deliberation on the most critical issues facing the country. The project and its publicly-released results were globally covered, including in a front-page, special feature of the New York Times that featured portraits of nearly every participant. In response to COVID-19, Helena led two projects. During the early months of the pandemic, Helena addressed critical breakdowns in the supply chain of vital protective equipment, directly purchasing/financing and routing more over 37 million masks, gloves, gowns and other PPE into the hands of frontline workers are nearly 100 hospitals and care facilities across the US. In parallel, Helena built The Covid Network, a real-time data platform quantifying COVID’s spread across the United States and current PPE needs for individual hospitals. Through its for-profit arm, Helena operates projects to address system global issues through investment, company building and more. Helena is a major investor and strategic partner in Energy Vault, a breakthrough in grid-scale energy storage. Helena’s second project, “Shield,” catalyzed state and federal action to help protect the North American electrical grid from threats due to solar storms and cyber-attack, including a 2019 Presidential Executive Order. Helena works alongside a small group of exceptional leaders called Helena Members, including Four-Star Generals, artificial intelligence experts, Fortune 100 CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize and Scientific Laureates, Academy Award Winners, former CIA Directors, leading Academics, NGO Leaders, explorers, and more.